Tuesday, February 20, 2007

With a little over 2 months before our first baby is due, my mind has been swirling with tons of financial issues. From "how much is that crib?!" To "holy crap I have to research all of the possible college savings plans out there, I'll be up all night!" From "how much allowance should we provide" to "how and when will I teach our child about money and finance?!" While searching for help on these questions, I came across and interesting quote by one the greats of science, Alfred Nobel.

I regard large inherited wealth as a misfortune, which merely serves to dull men's faculties. A man who possesses great wealth should, therefore, allow only a small portion to descend to his relatives. Even if he has children, I consider it a mistake to hand over to them considerable sums of money beyond what is necessary for their education. To do so merely encourages laziness and impedes the healthy development of the individual's capacity to make an independent position for himself.

This quote was brought on by his decision to leave his wealth for the establishment of the Nobel Prize instead of his children. Only a small portion of his wealth was left to any of his relatives. My philosophy on money pretty much reflects ideas like this one...

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

I recently found that the "Your Credit Advisor Blog" has compiled their own "Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs" list. At first glance it looks like link bait to me, but it looks like they took a little time and attention with this one. They have the list broken down into 11 defined categories, with summaries for each blog. The categories are:

Ask the Advisor's Top 10

Babes, Chicks, and Divas

Dollars and Cents

Finances

General Personal Finance Advice

How to Be a Millionaire

Investing and Business

Money, Money, Money, Money

Savings, Debt, Credit, Frugality and Taxes

Singles, Couples, Single Parents, Families, Retired, or Retiring

Youth/Under-30, College Students, Recent Graduates

My blog can be found under the "Finances" category, which is explained as "All the blogs here are about personal finance, but these are extra-focused."

Monday, February 05, 2007

Bankrate.com asks "Does money make you mean?" They find that a behavioral study points out that people with money on their minds are less helpful, less considerate and less willing to ask for help or associate with others than those who have not been "preconditioned" when it comes to money. The positive side to this behavior is that money-minded people tend to be more independent, focused and tend to work longer on tasks before asking for help.

A recent issue of "Science Magazine" published the study called "The Psychological Consequences of Money." They used random samples of students and nonstudents at the University of Minnesota, Florida State University and the University of British Columbia. After the groups were separated, some groups were "money primed" and the others received a "neutral primer" to money. The "money primed" group was reminded of money in several ways...

word scramble puzzle that contained money references, a poster depicting
different currencies, stacks of play money or tokens, or reading an essay that
mentioned money.

Some of the experiments and results...

In the first two experiments, subjects were given a puzzle and told that
help was available for the asking, either from the experimenter or a peer who
had just completed the exercise. Result: The money-prime participants waited
significantly longer than control subjects to ask for help.

In the final three experiments, money-prime participants placed more physical
distance between themselves and a participant partner, preferred solitary to
group leisure activities and more frequently chose to work alone rather than
with a peer compared to the control participants.

After the 9 experiments they didn't quite find that they were mean, more like "socially clueless"

"We didn't find any animosity; it was more of a sense of social cluelessness.
They're not mindful of other people. We don't have any indication that they were
being rude to these people. It was more 'I can't help you' or 'I don't know how
to help you.' Granted, being helpful would be a nicer thing to do, but the
intention wasn't to be selfish or mean; they just didn't see that they had a
role in this person's life."

So, do any of you notice this type of behavior in yourselves, or among other peers with the same "conditioning" or mindset? I know I'm guilty of a few...

Sunday, February 04, 2007

I mentioned in my last post that February 7th would be one year since this blogs inception. That was also the first time I started to keep track of our net worth on a monthly basis. I whipped up a quick spred sheet to compare last years figures to this years. (click picture on left) The results have me feeling stuck in the middle.

We did well with saving our money and increasing our net worth, but there's a part of me that feels we could've done better. The first category on the list are our various savings accounts. We saw a 127% increase due to our goal of saving for a house.

It was a nice surprise to see that our bonds have increased by 5.74%, which won't be touched by the federal government. Our assets overall have increased by a little over 18%. Not much to say about the liabilities. Slowly chipping them away by 4.56%. We won't be working hard on getting rid of them until we actually get a house. Our net worth overall have a nice size increase of almost 56.5%. Not bad...

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Where has the time gone? February 7th will be our 1 year anniversary since I made my first post on this blog. Posting has been sporadic, but it's done a lot to help with our personal finances. It's been an interesting month, interesting as in doing lot's of spending and saving.

This month we managed to increase our net worth by 4.26% or $5,750.69 for a grand total of $140,597.24. You can view the balance sheet I use on the left (click to enlarge). The most surprising thing about this month is the amount of money we were able to bank, a little over $5,100.

Unfortunately some of that will be off set by the credit card debt we've racked up. Those expenses include new baby furniture, a wedding shower my wife is in charge of, and various household and auto expenses. Wait until next month when the new carpet we bought hits the books. We've been using the cards in place of cash in a lot of transactions. It's to build up points for various merchandise, and other cash rewards. They're paid every month, so no interest is incurred.

Slight increases in our retirement accounts, and things like house, auto and personal property will stay static until my next net worth calculation. We're slowly chiseling down the auto and students loans, and increasing our emergency reserve fund. Overall not a bad month, I'm quite surprised. Climbing the ladder, slowly but surely...